France should tear up the deal which imposes British border checks on migrants in Calais unless radical changes are made, a senior politician has warned.
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Rudd will visit Paris tomorrow, just days after former French president Nicolas Sarkozy questioned the Le Touquet agreement which allows for United Kingdom border officials to operate in France. The layouts of both the Port of Dover and the Folkestone Channel Tunnel terminal would need to be completely redesigned and the number of sailings and shuttles would be limited to the rate at which passport and immigration checks could be completed upon arrival.
“That’s why we need to have a new treaty between Britain and France to deal with these problems once and for all”.
Meanwhile it was reported Britain is threatening to review security co-operation with France if it tries to scrap the border arrangements in Calais.
Mr Sarkozy, who hopes to make a comeback in the French presidential election next year, said the controversial “Jungle” migrant camp in Calais should be shut down and moved to Britain.
Bernard Cazeneuve, the Interior Minister, said: “It would send a signal to people smugglers and would lead migrants to flow to Calais in far greater numbers”.
He said on Saturday that Britain should open an asylum centre on its own territory to deal with migrants now camped in squalid conditions at Calais in the north of France.
Sarkozy said: “I’m demanding the opening of a centre in Britain to deal with asylum seekers in Britain, so that Britain can do the work that concerns them”.
In any event, the idea is surely a fantasy: the Government would not allow British border officials to participate in such a plan – which, by the way, has echoes of Donald Trump’s fabled Mexican wall.
The ministry said Tuesday that a joint police and army patrol near the border with Bulgaria caught the smugglers late Monday as they were transferring the migrants.
The figures were released as British Home Secretary Amber Rudd visits her French counterpart, with Calais likely on the agenda. Making Calais a place in which to claim asylum to Britain would simply encourage more to make the risky journey into France across Europe from the Middle East or North Africa.
“The French government has repeatedly made it clear that removing the juxtaposed controls would not be in the interests of France”.
“But Sarkozy with his desperate little speech at Le Touquet is trying to grub around in the gutter for votes to win his presidential primary”.
Under EU rules, known as the Dublin Regulation, asylum seekers should claim asylum in the first safe country they come to. “That’s the long-held global norm, and we’re going to stick to it”.
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The spokesman said “local politicians” in France occasionally called for changes to the Le Touquet arrangements, but that the Paris government’s continued support for the agreement was clearly restated last month in talks between Prime Minister Theresa May and President Francois Hollande.
